Sunday, April 23, 2006

Really Off the Subject, But Fun

If you want to see a Hall of Famer and a real artist at work, turn on the Cubs/Cardinals game quick. It's on the WGN "superstation". Greg Maddux is taking one of the best hitting teams in baseball apart this afternoon.

He just turned 40, has won over 320 games, and doesn't throw anything over 85 MPH. He just frustrates most hitters with location (they used to call that "control"), change of speeds, and IMHO, the best pitching mind in the game today (maybe ever).

It is 5-0 in the top of the Seventh.

Take a look.

Update:

Maddux went 7 shutout innings. Chicubs win 7 to 3.

11 comments:

MeaninglessHotAir said...

More such posts, please.

vnjagvet said...

MHA:

Sorry, I was carried away by his artistry this afternoon.

I cannot make it with all politics all the time.

It is history, you know when someone that good is performing that well at age 40 with no steroids.

At least as historic as the Duke Lacrosse story, IMHO.

One man's history is another's frivolity, I suppose.

vnjagvet said...

MHA:

BTW, are you by chance a Cardinals fan?

MeaninglessHotAir said...

I was a Cardinals fan when I was a boy. Now I'm a Rockies fan of course! For what that's worth. :-(

MeaninglessHotAir said...

And I agree, the all politics all the time is just too much.

Morgan said...

Agreed about the "all politics, all the time" format.

I'm a Cards fan, but this game was still fun to watch. Maddux was too good. He usually is.

brylun said...

And I too took a break from politics.

I was in Toronto this week to take my son to a Yankee/Blue Jays game on Wednesday afternoon with Mike Mussina pitching and Mariano Rivera closing. A great sunny and warm day - got sunburned.

Then we went to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Rick Ballard said...

Irregular regular sports features would be great. I wonder if Loner does sports as well as movies?

Unknown said...

Buddy Larsen:


Director posits proof of biblical Exodus
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in Exodus Decoded, Mr. Jacobovici says he has found almost a dozen overlooked relics that confirm the biblical story.

They include: a miniature, 3,500-year-old gold replica of the lost Ark of the Covenant, said to have been built during the Israelites' 40-year sojourn in the Sinai desert and three stone stelae with carvings depicting a charioteer chasing a single man through churning waters — the pursuer, like the Egyptian army, is ultimately drowned.

In addition, there is hieroglyph, the el-Arish stone, which appears to recount the Exodus from the Egyptian point of view — as a disaster, that is — and the seal of a royal scarab, found at Avaris north of modern-day Cairo, engraved with the name Ya'akov, the father of Joseph, who the Bible says was grand vizier, the second-most-powerful man after pharaoh.

Dating the Exodus to roughly 1,500 BC, the two-hour film presented and executive-produced by Hollywood director James Cameron and airing Easter Sunday on Discovery Canada — suggests that the great Santorini volcano caused the Ten Plagues that the Bible says were visited upon the Egyptians and which finally persuaded the pharaoh of the day.

The Greek island of Santorini lies only 700 kilometres north of Egypt. When it erupted, it sent smoke and ash 37 kilometres into the sky. Mr. Jacobovici contends that volcanology and geology can explain not only the first plague — that Egypt's waters were turned blood-red through the release of toxic gas, similar to what happened at Lake Nios in Cameroon in 1986; but they also can explain the succeeding nine plagues — frogs, fleas, flies, livestock deaths, boils, hailstorms, locusts, darkness and the death of the Egyptian firstborn males.

The film contends that the tsunami unleashed by the Santorini upheaval can also account for why the Israelites were able to cross the parting sea ahead of the pharaoh's army and why the Egyptians were subsequently engulfed. But Mr. Jacobovici says the sea Moses crossed was not the Red Sea, as is traditionally thought, but a smaller lake, known in Egypt as the Reed Sea. Its Egyptian name, translated into Hebrew, means "the place where God swallowed up."

Later in the film, Mr. Jacobovici, a 53-year-old two-time Emmy winner, claims to have found the authentic Mount Sinai. It is not the 2,285-metre structure widely considered to be the mountain where Moses received the Ten Commandments, near the foot of which now stands the Monastery of St. Catherine. Instead, he locates it farther north and east at a place called Hashem el-Tarif, and says it perfectly fits the Bible's description.
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www.theglobeandmail.com

loner said...

I'm an Angels fan. Through some twenty or so years I patterned myself on my old man and assumed things could always get worse. In 1986, I let myself hope when we talked the night before game five. For another sixteen years I reverted to form and finally they did the unthinkable—they won one in my lifetime. Unfortunately, my dad and Gene Autrey didn't live long enough to see it happen.

Being a lefty seemingly trumps all as my favorite players remain Sandy Koufax of the loathsome Dodgers and Ron Guidry of the loathsome Yankees even though it was Ryan who was for a time the only Angel.

Maddux is one of the greats, but the Lakers and Suns were playing.

When it comes to sports I'm mostly chiches.

loner said...

Autry, cliches and spelling issues.